A scathing 900-page, redacted report looked at serious abuse allegations in six of the state of Pennsylvania eight dioceses that minister to more than half of its 3.2 million Catholics: Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg. The report was the culmination of an 18-month probe led by Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The report showed hundreds of “predator priests” sexually abusing more than 1,000 children in Pennsylvania for decades — all while being shielded by Roman Catholic Church leaders, according to a scathing grand jury report released Tuesday.

Minnesota Public Radio

“Priests were reported as raping little boys and girls, and the leadership of the church did not punish those priest responsible but they did nothing. to make things worst they attempted to hide it all.”

“The pattern was abuse, deny and coverup,” Shapiro said Tuesday. “It served a legal purpose that church officials manipulated for their advantage.”

Church officials would routinely use language like “horseplay” to downplay concerns brought forward by victims or their families, Shapiro said. While the public has grown consistently outraged.

Cover-up goes all the way to the Vatican

“Several diocesan administrators, including the bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to police, pressured law enforcement to terminate or avoid an investigation or conducted their own deficient, biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the proper authorities,” the report says.

The report names 301 abusive priests, but the grand jury received files on more than 400, Shapiro said, Also stating the cover-up goes all the way to the Vatican.

Long-tern Issues of Child Abuse

The issue tragically seems to plague the Catholic church with decades of cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders, and subsequent cover-ups, in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions. The abused include boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14.

The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Which by the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Ireland, Canada, and the United States and Australia. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred.

The grand jury report follows the resignation last month of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former DC archbishop who was accused of sexually abusing underage boys and seminarians for decades. Dozens of church superiors were also named as complicit.

Confessions cover-ups, rapes-I along with many hope and pray that all who hide under the cloth and have committed these awful crimes against children are brought to justice and jailed-post haste.

Gregg L. Greer a Public Speaker, Pastor, Social Activist, and the Editor of the One World internet journal. Greer is the Founder of Freedom FirstInternational a human rights NGO. He has written extensively about American politics, civil rights, and the intersection of social justice and politics. Greer is the Founder of Black America World News. His stories have also appeared in The Huffington Post, CNN.Greer writes commentary on Apolitical America, MSNBC Online and others. Listen to his radio podcast at OneWorld Talks -if you are interested in interviews from him and others of the brightest minds today, you can email him at oneworldtoday@gmail.com His website is www.gregglgreer.com